


walking our crooked path home

by galacticdrift (Ancalime)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e16 Blood Must Have Blood Part II, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3871315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancalime/pseuds/galacticdrift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene for the S2 finale: Clarke, Bellamy, and Monty, sharing a common burden on the walk back to Camp Jaha after the fall of Mount Weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	walking our crooked path home

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Tallest Man on Earth's "Kids on the Run"

"Bellamy."

" _Bellamy_."

"Yeah." Clarke sees that muscle in his jaw jump, his face pale beneath the freckles and the dirt. His feet drag over the dirt, one boot catching on a rock.

"Everyone else is going that way." Clarke points, across his body, toward where the rest of the Hundred are following the way the path angles to the east. Bellamy grunts and turns, listing before he straightens.

"Yeah. Thanks."

Clarke wants to get them all behind the protection of Camp Jaha's electric fence -- scant as it might be -- as soon as possible, before anything else can happen, but the way the wounded are slowing them down they'll be lucky to make it back before sundown. And as Bellamy's demonstrating, even the ones not seriously injured are hardly in any condition for a long forced march.

"Hey, wait up."

Bellamy glances over at her, his expression tight but vague. Unfocused. When he comes to a halt he's swaying on his feet. Behind her, drowning out the normal small noises of the forest, she can hear the rest of the weary procession of Ark soldiers and the remaining members of the Hundred: footsteps and rustling fabric, the creak of leather, the plastic and metal clatter of guns.

The soft -- and some not so soft -- cries of pain from the wounded, walking and otherwise.

Her mother's on a stretcher, but for the most part everyone else has to make their own way, so long as they aren't literally falling down. Those who _are_ literally falling down are carried when they can't walk on their own -- Raven almost the whole time by Wick, Harper off and on by Miller, both of them spelled as needed by sympathetic Ark guards like Miller's father.

"Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm just--" He shakes his head, but then winces, one hand lifting to rub at his eyes. "Tired, that's all."

He knows _she_ knows he's not telling the whole story. Clarke falls silent for a few moments. She hadn't seen any major injuries on Bellamy, not that he's let her check him over properly. When they got back to Camp Jaha, she'll have to pull him aside and--

He's wandering off again. It's as if, now that Mount Weather's been dealt with and the reins of control have passed into other hands -- however shaky and unconsolidated -- Bellamy is giving in to his obvious exhaustion. Shutting down, almost. Or perhaps, she realizes, _standing_ down would be a more accurate term.

Taking a few steps to catch up, Clarke stretches out her arm. "Are you sure you're not--"

When her hand flattens against his back, he flinches away from her, a shudder running through him. "Bellamy, what's wrong? Talk to me."

"Don't worry about it." He runs a hand over his mouth. Under a neutral expression, Clarke can see that something's eating at him.

"Sure, _that_ 'll happen." Clarke's lips twist in bleak amusement as she runs a critical eye over him. "You're pale, unbalanced, not focusing. You're sweating. Your breath is shallow. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were suffering from bl--"

Bellamy's shoulders hunch, his body angling away from her a little.

"They bled you." Her throat closes up.

"Clarke, you--"

"They _bled_ you." Thick with horror, her voice comes out no louder than a whisper, and Clarke feels Bellamy's opaque gaze like a kick to the chest. "What-- what happened in there? What else did they do to you?"

"Same shit as any of the grounders, find one of them and they can tell you." He bites off the words, his expression closed.

" _Bellamy_."

"Don't, all right." Trailing off into a frustrated sigh, Bellamy gives one slow shake of his head and pulls away from her, shoulders slumped. "Just-- don't. I'll be fine."

"No, you won't, not if you bury whatever happened and don't let yourself deal with it--"

"I said _don't_." This time it's a plea. "This isn't the time or the place."

"It's me." The words tumble out of her mouth before they sink into her brain, and when the truth hits her it feels like someone has taken a rib spreader to her chest, prying apart her bones and reaching inside to squeeze her heart in their hands. "You can't talk about it with _me_. Because _I'm_ the one who sent you in there."

Bellamy's mouth works as he lifts his sagging head to look at her, eyes bright and face pinched, but he doesn't say anything in response and lets his gaze drop back down to the dirt at their feet.

Clarke comes to a halt on the path. When Bellamy notices she's fallen behind, he looks back and starts to turn, to come to her side, but she shakes her head and steps backward. He stiffens, a shadow of some complex emotion passing across his face, then wheels around toward the front of the line, his stride irregular but more energetic than before.

Clarke lets some more of the procession pass her by before falling in alongside the most burdened -- Wick, carrying Raven, Monty who's walking gingerly as if on eggshells, Harper who'd started out on her feet but currently is riding piggy-back on one of the Ark soldiers, her head lolling.

When Monty grabs on to her offered arm, Clarke can feel him shaking. "Hang in there, Monty. It's not too much farther."

"Thanks, Clarke." His voice is a whisper.

His haunted expression mirrors the one she struggles to keep off her own face. The same scores of irradiated bodies lay behind them in their wake.

"You did an important thing, Monty."

"If I-- hadn't been able to control the system, you'd still have found a way to bring down Mount Weather, right?"

Clarke nods. "I don't know what. But they were both too vulnerable and too great a threat. If you hadn't been able to remotely control the vents, we might have been able to open them up by hand. And if not that, then something else."

Monty's eyes remain fixed on her, still seeking something, and she wraps her free hand over his where it clutches at her arm. "But Monty? More of our people would have been hurt and killed. My mother could have died on that operating table. Even if he did manage to take out Wallace, Jasper probably would have gotten shot, Maya and Octavia probably would have gotten shot. You and Bellamy and I might not have made it out if Emerson had gotten into that security room with us. And sooner or later, one way or another, the rest of Mount Weather's people still would have died in the end."

She doesn't talk about saving the children, or asking for volunteers from Camp Jaha for bone marrow extraction, or any of the other scenarios she's been going over again and again in her head since they left the mountain's shadow. Every alternative she can think of brings up two new problems for each one solved, all of it the fruit of a poisonous tree. All of it boiling down to the twisted, blood-drenched roots that had nourished Mount Weather for so long.

"Thank you for what you did, Monty." Clarke knows he hates hearing it from anyone else as much as she does, but they share the burden. Between the two of them, and Bellamy, it means something different: not gratitude for a life saved but appreciation for another back to bear the weight.

"You saved us, Clarke." Monty leans against her for a moment. "Thank you."

A few minutes later the upright portion of Mecha Station comes into view in the distance, light glinting off it through the trees. They're still the better part of an hour away, but Clarke can almost see the wave of relief passing over the group. None of it settles on her; instead her shoulders lift and tense up as she starts letting herself think about all of them making it back, everyone safe inside Camp Jaha. Recovering. Preparing for winter.

"Jasper won't even look at me." Monty's voice is dull when he speaks, some time later. Clarke squeezes his hand.

"Bellamy won't tell me what happened to him inside Mount Weather." Her eyes pick him out immediately, up ahead, from his hair and the set of his shoulders. "All I know is that they bled him, and that there's more to it than that. But either he _won't_ talk to me about it, or he _can't_."

Monty's gaze follows hers. "He looks better now."

At her small, choked noise, he ducks his head. "You remember how everyone looked after that fever? Really pale and dark under the eyes? Aside from the blood, he looked a lot like that when he first made contact. But now, he's pretty much back to normal. He's recovering, you know?"

"I hope so." It's cold comfort for Clarke, but she grasps at it anyway. "I'm sure Jasper will come around. You two are like peas in a pod. I'm sure he misses you just as much as he's angry at you."

"And Bellamy will tell you everything eventually. He can't keep anything from you, he knows who's the better half of the whole co-leader thing." They share a weak smile.

The closer they get to Camp Jaha, the heavier Clarke's dread becomes. She feels like the arc of the station is looming over her, the electric fence reaching out with spidery, grasping arms toward her. "Monty -- what do you see when you look at the rest of them? Of us?"

"I see... survivors. A bunch of juvenile delinquents and adults who are phenomenally lucky to still be alive." Monty glanced at her. "I mean, they crash-landed a freaking space station. We at least had parachutes."

Clarke manages a small chuckle.

"And when I look at you, I see someone incredible and worthy of respect."

"Thanks, Monty. I respect you too, you know." Clarke smiles, but it's small and fragile.

In the long, stumbling crowd, she sees the dining tables of Mount Weather, bodies slumped in their seats. In Octavia, the rubble of TonDC; in Lincoln, the bullet wound in his shoulder where she had to shoot him to save him. She looks at Bellamy and sees him strung up vulnerable and scared, blood flowing through endless meters of tubing. Looks at her mother in her stretcher and sees Dante Wallace, slumped on the floor.

"I don't--" Clarke takes a deep, shaky breath. "I don't think I can go back to camp right now."

There's an unwilling understanding in Monty's expression. Clarke lets herself lean against him for a moment. "Our people will be taken care of for a little while. They don't need me right now, and I need to-- to not have to see them all the time."

"I can't say I don't get it." Monty picks at a loose stitch of yarn on the sleeve of his gray sweater. "You know it's going to be hard on Bellamy, though."

"Bellamy will have people to take care of and to take care of him, which is exactly what he needs."

"Will you be okay all on your own?"

Clarke shrugs, a little helplessly. They're trudging up the slope towards Camp Jaha's main gate. Some people have already made it inside. "It has to be now, though. Once we go through that gate, between my mother and Bellamy, I know I'll never be able to slip away again on my own."

"Clarke--"

"Survivors, right? Well, so am I. I'll be okay, Monty." They come to a halt by the side of the path, just outside the gate. Monty turns to her, unfolding his arms, and Clarke lets him wrap her up in a hug.

Bellamy's waiting for her at the gate. When he walks away from Camp Jaha to join her, it makes her ache a little inside at being right, but at the same time -- it's selfish, and she knows it, but she's glad to get one last chance to talk with him. To not let their final conversation be about the pain she brought upon him.

"I think we deserve a drink."

To say just one proper farewell.


End file.
